HMV confirms a miserable Christmas

HMV needed a good Christmas, or at least nothing worse than a mildly bad one. Santa didn't turn up.

Like-for-like sales were down 8.1% in the five weeks to the end of 2011. Unfortunately, given that they closed all those stores, this means actual total sales were down 16.6%.

Trying to find something positive to say, the former record shop chain offer that this is a "slowing" of the decline of the business. But presumably that's because there's not much left to fall away.